Well…it’s funny how just a response to the resumes I’ve sent out can take you up and over the top and it’s something I need to work on…after all, no guarantee for a second interview or the job so I do need to throttle it back a bit…I did go out and buy a suit today…200 bucks but it is a really cool charcoal gray and fits just great…I’ve never owned one before and it is kind of weird to just be getting one this late in the day…now I just need to make sure I don’t gain any weight for the rest of my life….there was quite a bit of wildlife on the trail this morning with a couple of young male deer that looked like twins with antlers that were about 6 inches long…and right across the trail was a muskrat that I’ve seen the past two days now…pretty neat…I may go back out later since the storms have fallen apart and it looks like we won’t even get any rain here.
Oh, Politics….nope, don’t have anything right now except that the repubs have more voting shenanigans that they are imposing in the states they control; voting for more laws that will restrict voting rights…or make it more difficult to vote under the laws, justifying them by saying there is massive voter fraud going on when it’s just not true…one neat little tidbit that came out of Texas on this issue was just downright funny…you can use your permit to carry a concealed weapon for identification to vote, but you can’t use a student ID issued by the universities there….and guess who votes more for repubs? You got it, gun owners….just makes you want to scream….
Well…have gone through all of the online papers and nothing really came up that grabbed me so this one is going to be just the wanderings of what I call my mind…I know, some of you might think that I don’t have one if you’ve read many of these but at least I try….most days anyway. So, the good new in the title is a new poll that came out in the last couple of days that is starting to show that the people are having a galloping case of buyer’s remorse with the freshmen repubs in the house, and the repubs in general once they started to reveal the true nature of their agenda. I can’t be happier about that since I have been trying to call attention to this stealth campaign to give the entire country away to the rich and connected since I started this thing over a year ago…people are starting to realize that the government is necessary for their protection from unbridled capitalism and the huge money that bought the House for the repubs. Now all we need to do is turn out for the next election and send these radicals back to the backwaters where they came from and get the adults back in charge…adults that don’t think that compromise is treason…adults that understand that they need to govern for all of the people, not just the ones that voted for them….as you can tell…I still have hope that we can be better as people and as a nation…and that maybe someone will realize that people like me still have value in the labor market and can contribute…okay, went off topic there at the end…but I did get another one out…bet you didn’t think that would happen….
Well..it’s been a busy day today..had lots to do to get to this point and I am now just sitting down for the first time today to take a look at the world of politics and put in my two cents. I am just amazed at the repub hypocrites that have the gall to ask ‘where are the jobs?” as a campaign slogan when, for the 8 years they held power, not one net job was produced by them or their voodoo economics of tax cuts, tax cuts, and more tax cuts. As I have said many times before, if tax cuts spurred job growth, why aren’t we swimming in new jobs with tax rates being at their lowest overall level in more than 50 years. I am more than frustrated by the dems not standing on any flat surface and shouting these facts; that the repub policies do not work for job creation…and I’m sure that business is not hiring just for the fact that they want a repub back in the White House to de-regulate some more and take the remaing shards of the American dream and rip it from the last few hands of the middle class…ignorance is going to be the end of this country I fear…
Well….as you know, the healthcare debate is one that hits really close to home for me since I haven’t been able to afford health insurance for the last nine years and, under any plan that the repubs have presented, I’ll never be able to afford it until I turn 65 and qualify for Medicare. One of the things that just bugs the hell out of me are all of the righties attacking the health care reform bill with the lies that it has already resulted in higher costs and people losing their insurance…when you hear these things being said, just remember that most of the law has not even taken effect yet….so any higher costs or loss of coverage is because the insurance companies have decided to make those changes, not that they have been forced to by the law. Where are the repub voices that decry the insurance companies taking advantage of these lies to further gouge the people? They will never be heard exactly because the insurance companies own the repubs and have purchased their vote to both defeat the current law and to help them get their hands on Medicare to further control the healthcare market.
So, can we at least try to make the repubs tell the truth for once and do what is best for the country instead of just themselves and their owners? Geez….
Well…it appears that the thoughts are coming in small bites today so that what is coming out and I guess I’ll just live with it…I don’t know if it is too soon to say I told you so…but a couple of months ago I predicted that without a continuing stimulus program that included additional government spending on infrastructure and other projects such as schools, roads, and high speed internet, that the economy would head back into recession and that is just what is happening. No matter what the repubs would have you believe, Keynesian economics and its principles that have been proven time and again over the years to be correct cannot be denied just because it goes against the orthodoxy of the repub party. And, they are compounding the problem by doing just what they did in the great depression…cut too much spending before the economy was self-sustaining. You know where this is going to go don’t you? These repub know-nothings are going to try to blame this on overspending by Obama…but, there appears to be a building groundswell of buyers remorse about the repubs control of the House and their radical right-wing agenda. Hope so….geez…
Oh, one last thing…if the business world truly believed the fantasy of the repubs economic policies, wouldn’t they still be hiring to get out ahead of the boom that is supposed to be coming? Business truly knows that the policy of cutting spending during a recession is wrong headed and they are predicting the results that are coming by not hiring any more people that they will just have to lay off when the second dip comes…stupid, stupid repubs…
Well…as I said this morning, there has not been much going on in politics for me to write about and I guess it’s one of the problems a couterpuncher has…someone has to punch first…and no one is punching so I guess I’ll have to come up with something on my own. Hmmmmm…oh, Ohio State…as a Michigan fan, I’m having a hard time dredging up any sympathy for the situation there…I’m glad that Tressel resigned and that the shenanigans with almost their whole team has been exposed; the smirk has been taken off the face of their fans and they are going through what we went through with Rodriguez. They will always be known as cheaters now…
Oh, on politics….just some general stuff that has been percolating…I hope the repub idiots here in Michigan get their victory dances in now because they are going to pay in 2012….we may still have a repub governor, but we will have at least the house or senate back after these thugs gave the state away to business on the backs of retirees and the poor…the pendulum is going to swing back to sanity after the flirtation with the tea party and it’s right wing radicals. You heard it here first….that’s about it for now…thinking is not coming easily right now….but is is so much better than this morning…I think I’ll do a no booze day count…might be fun to chronicle…
Well….reading the papers today, I was stuck by an opinion piece that was done by George Will asserting that Obama is breaking the law by not reporting to Congress about the activities in Libya…with ole George just apoplectic that any president, especially this one, would break the law not be held accountable. Geez, George, are you getting so old you have no memory? You were one of the cheerleaders when ole GW gutted the constitution and broke not only our laws, but international ones along with abrogating treaties with his approval of torture and the warrantless wiretapping of US citizens. Even when it was revealed that GW and his team ginned up the evidence to go to war in Iraq, you still supported him and you said not one peep that it was against the law. I am getting so tired when the rats on the right will do or say anything to try to bring down a sitting president but give the thugs on their side a free pass to lie, cheat, and steal…you are supposed to be some kind of intellectual voice from the right but right now you are just another talking point reader that has no integrity…but I guess you just fit in with all of the other hypocrites on the right….geez…
Well…just sitting here waiting for the Man U match to start and thought I’d get to some of the musings that I promised a few days back…the rail trail is looking so cool now with the foliage finally filling in and making it a green tunnel that not even light can get through and that makes it it almost immune to the wind, too. Pretty neat stuff and the other day “No Quarter” came on when I entered the tunnel and it fit just so well that I couldn’t help grinning….as I’ve always said, it doesn’t take much to make me happy. It seems that lately the people on the trail are nicer, too, paying attention and reining in their dogs when I go by…maybe the “thank yous” are starting to help…hope so…it is nice to see smiles and not scowls when I blow past in a sprint. I do have to put the bike on the back of the car soon to take it to the car wash to clean it…it is as dirty as I can remember it and I am a little ashamed even thought I know that bikes are supposed to be dirty if you’re using them right.
I wasn’t going to talk about politics today but some heartening patterns are starting to emerge when we look at the overreach of the radical right wing of the repub party….they have lost almost every special election that has been held this year and people are rejecting their vision of America where all of the benefits of the country accrue to just the few rich and business. And we see the plummeting approval ratings of the repub governors that have pushed through anti worker legislation and given away their states to business. I hope the recall of gov Snyder gains steam here in Michigan since he is governing only to his base and his business masters…we are ripe for a revolution here where the dems are going to take back both houses and then where will that idiot be? Okay….the match is ready to start in a few so I’ll end here…
Well…I always have to laugh when I hear anyone of the supposed repub presidential candidates talk about the need for “new leadership” in Washington, and then go on to say they are the ones that should be leading. The latest of these idiots is the former governor of Minnesota, Tim Pawlenty, who chose to criticize the administration for it’s spending to get the country out of the worst recession since the twenties, and it’s lack of support gutting seniors healthcare that is proposed by one of the other “brains” of the repub party, Paul Ryan. What kind of leadership is he talking about? Leading the country back to the deregulation that caused the last meltdown? Leading the country back to the bad old days when the majority of our retirees lived a life of abject poverty after lives of hard labor? Leading the country back to the discrimination that blacks and gays have felt for many, many years? Leading the country back to the time when the middle class didn’t exist and all of the riches of this country are in the hands of the robber barons and labor has to beg for the scraps that are left? One thing we don’t need right now is any form of repub “leadership”, I think that is an oxymoron anyway…the repubs never lead, they just follow the instructions of their business masters to the detriment of the rest of the country…geez…
Well…just a shorty to talk about one last thought I had about some other events that have defined the repub party here and across the entire US. Here in Michigan, the ultra right wing repubs had their hands slapped when they tried to involve the legislature in the working of the state universities who, by the constitution, are independent entities set up that way to make sure that the winds of political change don’t interfere with the charter of these institutions. What these guys tried this week was to impose their religious views on stem cell research on the universities by creating all kinds of new reporting regulations that would have the effect of chilling this important avenue of research along with making an unconstitutional power grab for the legislature. But, as we all know, the repubs don’t give a damn about the constitution except as a tool for political advantage. The second thing the new commissars of Michigan tried was to pass a bill that would prevent any university here from offering health benefits to same sex partners under penalty of withholding operating funds from any one who did…again, usurping the constitutional powers of the boards that govern the universities and trying to jam their far right craziness on the population who, by a large majority, approve of these benefits…but, that has never mattered to the repubs…they only govern for those who vote for them and the rest of us are just leeches to be punished in any and all ways at their disposal….can’t wait for 2012…and the Snyder recall petitions…